"She sounds very sensible, Henry."
"She was. Salt of the earth, my ma."
Twila thought it best to change the subject. She wasn't exactly the salt of anything at the moment, asking this boy to continue in chicanery of a sort.
"I need your word that you'll keep working for me without admitting as much to Mr. Mitchell. Can you do that, Henry? I understand you respect him as your employer. I'm asking for that same kind of respect. If you don't feel we can continue—"
"Oh, no, ma'am! I mean, sure I'll do whatever you need, ma'am. And I won't say anything if you don't want me to. Course, you got to understand the ranch comes first. I was only helping you when I had a spare moment. Still has to be like that, or the boss will fire my sorry butt. He won't allow anybody to hang around like deadwood. Every man here has to do his share."
"Naturally, Henry. I wouldn't want to make things difficult for you here. But they're even more awkward for me now, if you see my point. Before I was in the heart of town…such as it is."
Twila had refrained from denigrating Wadsworth up until now, but in comparison to Omaha, Cheyenne, Laramie, or Ogden, this was a ragtag collection of buildings and homesteads along a riverbank. Nothing special. Hardly the bustling center of enterprise her uncle had spoken of before they made the arduous trip out. A handful of stores, livery stable, post office, and two blocks of bawdy houses…it hardly qualified in Twila's mind as a real town. Not to mention the place had only one house of worship, run by the most distasteful excuse for a preacher Twila could imagine.
"Oh, I guess you're right. Didn't ponder on that when I said I was glad you were here. I meant for Boss' sake." He made an impatient gesture with his hand. "Well, you know."
No, she didn't. Not at all. In fact, she'd been suspicious from the first that this whole marriage stemmed from some grandiose act of noble charity on Del's part. It was only the earnestness in Henry's eyes that had her doubting that assumption. "What do you mean? Is something wrong with Del? Is he ill or—"
"Oh no, nothing like that. Not so's anyone would see on the outside. He's real cagey about that. Even I didn't know at first. But when you work with a man for months, maybe even rescue him from being trampled or thrown…" Henry flushed again, ambling through the dust back toward the house. "We have to work together in a different way than you folks running the mercantile. Any day someone could get seriously hurt, maybe even killed. We're like a family here, and that's how come I came to see that Mr. Mitchell's really a lonely sort. Deep inside. He'll go to the saloon with us other fellas, have him a good laugh, maybe play cards. But his heart ain't in it. Not really."
"Oh. I never realized. He's so—" Now Twila blushed in turn, realizing she'd been about to say "virile." Del was possibly the best looking, most overwhelmingly male person she'd ever encountered. She hadn't even been aware of the dichotomy in her own mind until this instant.
There were men, like Uncle Fletcher or Lucius, or any number of passengers on the trains. Customers who came into the emporium. Then there were these wranglers. Tougher, leaner, faces creased by the sun, clothes permanently softened into folds and wrinkles earned through hard labor. And at the pinnacle of that second group stood Del. A male of some entirely different order. A man who Twila had glimpsed stark naked—vulnerable as a man could ever be—yet he'd still managed to emanate formidable strength and solidity. Assurance. Power.
She choked at the image. Literally.
Caught between the impulse to speak and draw an inward gasp at her own startling realization—that he'd indeed been naked on the divan in that hotel suite under his blanket, a fact revealed when he'd fallen to the floor—she managed to draw her spittle into her windpipe. Henry began slapping her back, hollering at the top of his lungs. A handful of men came running to see what the trouble was.
Twila saw them in the periphery of her vision, but was barely able to get her breath. She tried to slap away the open palms flailing at her. They weren't clearing her airway, they only managed to hit her with blows firm enough to leave bruises.
"Put your arms up over your head."
The calm voice of reason. Del's voice.
He seized her wrists and forced her arms up. He tilted her head back. Her airway opened.
"Was she eating or drinking anything out here?" He frowned at Henry.
Henry shook his head in denial. Del watched her closely as Twila was finally able to draw several breaths without immediately going into another paroxysm of coughing. "I'll take over. You fellas get on back to work."
Twila was grateful she couldn't speak. She had this crazy mental image of herself blurting out that maybe she'd fallen hopelessly in love. All because Henry had offered a sorrowful tale about Del being unhappy inside. Or maybe because Twila saw Del as handsome, incredibly masculine and capable. Maybe because she'd never known anyone quite like Delancy Mitchell, and had never been so aware of any man. Maybe because she'd never before yearned for the things Del's presence conjured.
Images of patient understanding and appreciation. A true home. Children at her feet. A loving smile, warm embraces…more of the mysterious communication and reassurance that seemed to emanate from Del's blue eyes. He was doing it again, in fact. Right that second. Because she wasn't choking anymore, and somehow Del seemed amused.
"Henry play on your female sensitivities until you got all choked up, Mrs. Mitchell?"
"How did you know?"
Del quietly led Twila inside the house. "He's been after me to get married since about a week after I hired him. He's a good kid. But he is a kid, and he misses his ma something fierce. She died about three years ago. I reckon he's been hoping I'll bring a female on the scene who can replace her."
Twila sat down heavily on one of the wooden chairs. Hadn't Henry just brought up his late mother?
"He seemed to think that you're secretly lonely."
Del calmly hung his hat on a peg and walked into the bedroom. Without consciously thinking about what she was doing, Twila followed. "Del? Did you hear me? Is he just fancying something because he wants to, or is he right about that?"
Del sat down on the edge of the big bed. "Maybe. But I think everybody's a little lonely inside. You were friends with Henry before, so I could ask the same thing. Aren't you lonely yourself, Twila? Haven't you always needed someone to understand you, the way nobody else ever could, maybe your whole life?"
These odd philosophical moments still gave her pause. They didn't seem in keeping with the hard-drinking, bronco-riding exterior of Del Mitchell. She shrugged, feigning a casual acceptance she didn't feel in the least.
"I guess you know the answer. Everyone thinks the worst about me. I've never understood why, beyond my uncle's open disdain. Lucius has always been hateful. I assume it's some sort of twisted sibling rivalry in his case. Other people? I don't know. I haven't done anything to most of them. I don't know how they can make assessments."
"You're a wonder, Twila. A woman with real depth and dimension."
Tears stung her eyes. "Please don't say things like that," she pleaded, wringing her hands. If he didn't stop, she just might make a complete fool of herself.
He calmly reached for one of her hands and drew her to stand beside the bed, then captured her with his arms, burying his face against her breasts. It was truly scandalous to be held like that. No man had ever put his face against her bosom. But it felt so very peculiar, Twila wanted a second to analyze the sensation. She also belatedly realized Del wasn't talking. Just holding her. But he wasn't about to let go, she discovered when she tried to pull free.
"Twila," he breathed. God, she'd never felt warm breath quite there. It gave her a most unsettled feeling, a tightening in places no lady even thought about. "You haven't asked me where your place is in this big bed."
She gasped, discovering he was using the toe of one boot to tug down the heel of the other, effectively shucking off his footwear even as he held her close and nuzzled her breasts. "Del, it's broad daylight! Anyone could come in t
he front door and—"
"Only if they want to either be fired from my payroll or possibly shot on sight. None of them are quite that dumb."
"Del!"
Now his fingers worked at the fastening at the waistband of her skirt.
"Twila," he purred right back. "You still didn't ask me."
"I can't," she confessed in a whisper as he raised his head. She saw his thick lids, the sensual haze that had come over his features.
"All right. Step out of that skirt and take off your shoes. Then I'll tell you."
Maybe, her mind desperately churned, he was just going to suggest they have an afternoon nap. Yes, hadn't she read that somewhere? These Western cowboy sorts kept odd schedules, rising before dawn and so forth. "Are we going to have a fiesta?" she inquired, trying to remember the Spanish word she'd read for the custom.
She could swear he snorted. "Yeah, I'd say so." He let her remove her shoes, then tugged her bodily onto the mattress and bore her down, kissing her until she was breathless.
"Twila, sweetheart, your place in this bed is underneath me. Welcome home, Mrs. Mitchell."
CHAPTER 9
Twila had began to buck and resist, murmur weak protests…pretty much as he'd expected. Del debated with himself all morning about how to get her past "the stranger he'd married" to "wife in fact." He'd decided he wouldn't give her all afternoon and evening to think about consummating their union. That would just let her work up a set of nerves until she was so jittery, she'd be about ready to vomit at his first intimate touch. Instead, he decided to face the problem early on, but take the subtle approach.
And she'd passed his first test, instinctively following wherever he led without seeming awareness she was doing it. He'd gotten her from outside into the house, then into the bedroom, half undressed, and onto the bed. Now she desperately clutched at her inner fears, but it was too late. It was simply a matter of proving those fears were mostly groundless. Mostly. But he would have to hurt her, just this once.
He wouldn't ride her hard…but he would ride her long. Because to his mind, another big mistake would be backing off shortly after initiation. That would leave her focusing on the blood and pain. No, he wasn't going to leave it at "the deed's done."
He'd told Sandy to keep the men clear of the ranch house for the rest of that day and clear through the next. Any man caught trying to peep into its windows risked having his precious parts blown to smithereens by Del's rifle.
Course, there weren't any bullets in it as a rule, but the men didn't know that. Del recalled the few times his men had witnessed him shoot the thing. Their whistles of astonishment. Del was good with a long gun…something he proved just often enough to keep the fact burned into everyone's minds. No one on his spread doubted his authority to enforce whatever rule he laid down.
So poor Twila couldn't hope for any interruptions to spoil the fun. Even Biscuit had been instructed to leave a tray of food out on the porch. Yeah, they were going to have a fiesta, all right.
"Stop struggling, honey," Del cooed in the same calming tone he used with restless ponies. "Easy now."
"You're frightening me," she panted, eyes wide.
He feigned total incomprehension. "For pity's sake, how? I'm just kissing you. Lying here with my arms around you. You've been in my arms and drunk my kisses before."
"Aha! You see, that's what I mean! 'Drunk.' What kind of thing is that to say?"
"Only the God's honest truth, Mrs. Mitchell. I distinctly remember showing you exactly how attracted and eager I felt just before we knocked on his door and roused that preacher in Reno. I remember kissing you after he spoke the words over us. That was no sweet peck. I kissed you, man to woman. You didn't seem to mind. In fact, I nearly gagged, with your tongue so far down my throat."
"It was not!"
He just laughed. "I liked it, honey. And there's more I like." Even as he was cajoling, his fingers were busy, undoing buttons on her blouse.
"This is not at all proper," she sniffed, trying to hold the fabric together that her unfastened buttons had just released.
Del rolled a bit away from her. "I see we got a couple of areas we need to clear up. My fault. I should've made some things plain before we took those vows. One, I don't want you to be afraid to ask what pleases me, or tell me what pleasures you. Not when we're alone together like this. And two, anything we do in this room is completely, unarguably proper. That was the point in having the Almighty sanction our union. Are you saying you don't believe we truly got God's blessing?"
She narrowed her eyes, sensing the trap. Too bad. He'd slipped the bridle in place. Now all he had to do was get her to take the bit and adjust to the feel of him holding her reins.
"You're trying to confuse me," she accused.
He chuckled again, shaking his head. "I'm trying to make love to you."
Her eyes went from accusatory to almost wounded. He could swear he saw a sheen of tears form. She clutched the edges of her blouse all the tighter.
"Twila? What's come over you? You know I had to expect…we're married now."
"I thought in order to make love to someone, you had to feel it."
Well, hell. Bucked off, and a solid whack against the paddock fence. He sat up and sighed. "You can't expect that. Not under the circumstances. That's not fair, Twila. Maybe you're not going to be the wife I hoped for, after all."
He wasn't really as upset or dejected as he put on, but he moved away, sitting on the far edge of the mattress, bare feet on the floor as if he meant to get up and leave. He felt the mattress shift, then her arm slipped around his neck from behind. "I don't know how to be what you want, Del," she murmured. There was something like a sob. "I've never had to be anything but a burden, and that was easy. I just seemed to breathe and people—"
He spun and pinned her once more, with a hand over her lips. "I don't want to hear you say things like that ever again, Twila Mitchell." He took his hand away and glared down at her. The expression in her golden eyes could have been terror, anger…he didn't know what she was feeling. But her breasts were rising and falling at a pretty good clip…and she had followed him yet again, actually put her arm around him this time. Pretty much like when he turned his back on a colt and it nudged with its nose. She wanted to maintain contact, no matter what she said.
"How about if we don't talk for a bit? Find our way without all the thinking and talking, all right? Just let me touch you and kiss you. Touch me. That's what I was going to ask you to do before. I'd really like to feel your hands cupping my face."
When she placed a palm against his cheek, he nuzzled and burrowed his face against it. When the other dainty palm moved to frame his face, he dropped his head and placed a kiss on her collarbone. "That feels like heaven. Just let me do a couple things here while you do that. It feels so unbelievably good, Twila."
And Christ, but it did. Her hands massaged his face, moved up to his temples and into his hair. Exactly where he wanted them when he yanked her chemise aside and captured a nipple in his mouth. She gasped—as he'd anticipated—but he didn't let on he'd heard it. Just started a slow suckling. And as he'd guessed, her hands began doing a bit more than rubbing his scalp. They began directing his head. From one side to the next, in closer.
"Oh! Oh, Del, did I pull your hair?"
She'd yanked out a couple dozen of them, but right now he was so damned randy, he'd let her pluck him bald before he'd stop the onslaught. "Doesn't hurt, honey. You just keep showing me where you want me to—"
She'd tugged his head down and lifted her belly up. Suddenly his face was buried right there, with that pretty little navel of hers just ready for reaming with the tip of his tongue. He obliged and kept moving lower, warily, expecting that any second she'd let out a shocked gasp of outrage. But he didn't get one. Just more whimpering and moaning, her hands gripping his shoulders, her legs thrashing…
"We got to take everything off," he panted. He couldn't wait another second to get to that crucial moment. He yanked
off his pants and drawers, pleased to see she'd obediently shucked her blouse and chemise. She sat in the middle of his bed, stark naked, hands over her breasts, eyes wide with fear.
"Three," he panted, feeling her gaze drop to the obviously most interesting new thing in the room. "You don't need to do that." He pointed at her, at how she was covering up. "I've already tasted and seen. Remember where I said your place was?" She nodded, reluctantly moving her hands from covering herself and slowly stretching out on the mattress, eyes screwed shut.
She was a banquet. Russet locks spilling across his pillows and mattress, tight little body with its beaded breasts, half quivering with anticipation. And her thatch was reddish, too. Swollen with arousal. A man would have to be dead not to be hot as hell just looking at the feast waiting there on that mattress. A cowboy naturally thought of mounting and riding…but he knew that kind of move would be a big mistake.
So he put one knee on the bed, and then the other. He stretched next to her, began stroking her belly with his hand, murmuring softly to her, bending to kiss one tight nipple until he felt her relax and start to give in to the pleasure. Ten minutes later, she'd spread her legs and was whimpering, silently begging for the ride that would change their lives.
That's when he mounted, and as she bucked in the natural way of a pony who'd never been to bit, he tore her maidenhead. "Del!"
It was more accusation than surprise. "Ssh, I'm sorry, Twila. I know I'm big and it hurts. But just this once, sweetheart. I promise it won't ever hurt again. Try not to think about that part. Try not to think at all. Just feel right now. Close your eyes and feel, honey."
And Del plied her with every delight he'd ever tested on a whore. He licked and kissed and suckled—at first with her just pinned under him by the staff that had impaled her. And as he'd hoped, she began riding his shaft just a little, grinding her hips as he toyed with her and kissed her. "Oh…oh, it's…oh, Del!" This time it wasn't accusation, but discovery. And that was the moment he knew he truly had her. She'd taken the bit, was ready to gallop and fly.
Hell's Belle Page 10
